The love of Christ impels us!

What was the impulse that prompted Our Lady to go in haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth if not the Child of Love she carried within her heart and womb? "The love of Christ impels us," St. Paul proclaimed (2 Cor 5:14), and so it was for Mary, the Mother of Our Lord. Jesus-living-in-Mary sent her on His "errand of love," and His presence within her brought untold joy to both Elizabeth and her unborn child.

This "spirit that animated the Virgin Mary at the time when she visited her cousin Elizabeth in the mountains," wrote Andre Ravier in his book Francis de Sales Sage and Saint, is "the spirit of adoring union with the Word Incarnate, the spirit of thanksgiving before ‘the marvels of God’, of spontaneity and promptness in rendering the humble services of daily life. The most extraordinary divinity enclosed in humanity the most silent and the most commonplace. The essential!”

Dear Mary, Virgin of Advent, instill within us your spirit of the Visitation. With you, let us gladly go in haste to bring your Divine Child to wherever He wants to be. Amen.